I used to read tons of books as a kid, a habit that stayed with me well into high school and university and latter on. Whenever I would be feed up with novels and their fictious stories and characters I would turn to travelogues with their free spirit for inspiration. I would read them in an instant and then daydream about far and exotic locations and experiences. All those travellers were my heroes. All their stories were my stories. I would relieve them in my memory so many times that I would know the stories by heart. And I would go to bed dreaming it is me climbing those mountains, driving those roads and watching those animals.
But all those stories would probably stay just that – stories lived by some others, more courageous than me, the brave that had the guts to pack their things and went to meet the world. Then I’ve got a lucky break. Half way trough high school I’ve meet one of my heroes. This was a guy that cycled around the world. He has seen mujahideen fight Russians in Afghanistan, rode his bicycle up and all the way around Tibet, Australian outback and americas. His life changed when he was told by his doctor he’s only got a good few months left. And so he switched his office job for a bicycle and the road. Needles to say he is still around. These days he is doing everything he can to help out the Nuba people from southern Sudan, Africa suffering from starvation due to civil war.
So there I was having drinks with my hero talking about where he’s been and what he’s done. I was expecting to be overexcited and fascinated by him. And of course I was not. His endeavours were better than great, his thinking and writing I liked. But he, he was just an ordinary man. His accent was funny to me at the time, he was not this all present person that would fill the room and make everybody listen to his stories. It was there and then I have started realising you do not need to be next superhero to hit the road. Although that evening I was slightly disappointed it was this realisation that set me on the path of travelling. Right there and then I knew I could do it. I could go about discovering the world with all its riches.
These days I still like travelogues a lot. But read them looking for different things than before. It’s not about locations or places or events or hidden gems or superhuman efforts. I’m reading them in search of authors way of thinking, seeing the world, looking for evidence how travellers get changed by interaction with people they met, cultures they try to understand. How they incorporate those new findings into their world, how they react to things they’ve come across a million times before when they return home. I guess this is what drives me travelling. Not only exploration of cultures, sweet people you run into, all the conversations you would never have staying at home, but above all my desire for the world out there, the world that is so different to ours, to let that world influence me, to let it show me so many things. And by letting the world showing me all that I can appreciate my little world that much more every time I come back home.
